Normally I'm happy about having wired and networked things, but not with appliances. Mostly dumb has served us well, and I can't see much value in my oven running Android. OTOH, I can see a lot of issues with the same thing happening.

Samsung has a problem updating their phones and tablets to the most recent OS; do we need to worry about our fridge's OS, too?

Well my Samsung SmartTV seems to receive updates with annoying frequency, both for it's primary launcher and for each of the apps, like HBOGo and Netflix. The TV has an app store for god's sake. So in the future you might want to take into the whole ecosystem into consideration when it comes to things you didn't previously think depended on such an ecosystem. Couple of years ago "app" wasn't even a word, and now people are familiar with the idea of having to update apps on their phones, so there's no reason you can't spread that to other things.

These are all durable goods, kept for the long term without any equivalent to the smartphone carrier subsidy to promote premature replacement. If they're going to be smart, software-powered devices, they're going to need software lifecycles that are appropriate to their longevity.

That costs money, it requires a commitment to providing support, and it does little or nothing to promote sales of the latest and greatest devices.

This is a societal problem. These things are not produced with the aim of bettering one's life (that's a side effect), they are produced with the aim of separating you from your money.

Why would anyone even remotely familiar with computers and embedded systems think "gosh, you know what my kitchen needs? MORE SOFTWARE." I mean, shit, my fridge already has plenty of mechanical possible failure points, I see no reason at all to add viruses and software crashes to the list of things that could go catastrophically wrong. Ditto for literally every other appliance I own.

Agree 100%. Appliance manufacturers have been trying to sell the "smart" fridge / dishwasher / oven / clothes washer for a least a decade but it's largely a solution in search of a problem. Who actually needs their fridge to tell them it's empty? You just open the door and look which is probably something you do every morning anyway.

Add in built in obsolescence and it's hard to see why anybody would want to pay a premium for it?

Cynically, I've always considered this to be a form of accelerated obsolescence that is purely profit-driven. The security issues are a concern as well. If my experience with Motorola and cellphone OS updates is any indication, you might not even get one year worth of updates.

I wonder how willing manufacturers are to hiring and retaining a staff of software devs to both develop new code and maintain old code.

I'm actually still waiting for a carrier to be sued for loss related to a bug or vulnerability in a smart phone that was known and the fix was released by Microsoft (I believe they can skip one update) or Google.

On your home PC you are the admin and are responsible for keeping your PC up to date. On most cells the Vendor is the admin and is responsible for keeping the phone up to date. While there are probably clauses in your contract it might be interesting to see them tested in court against say a negligence claim.

It will likely be the same with smart appliances. Once a fire or two is caused by someone hacking a oven or dryer, Or a gas explosion.If the manufacture is in court and forced to say, we were notified of this vulnerability but decided not to fix it it might not be just a civil suit then.

You think LG's little phoning home problem is some kind of isolated incident? Every 'smart' appliance will be funneling sweet, sweet, consumer analytics back to the mothership as fast as it can, even before the bot-herders crack the pitifully outdated firmware.

Right after you tweet something about ghost pepper marathon and tag it with #yolo.

You know this does make me slightly sad for our future. We can (intelligently) trade insults with our furniture and appliances. Back when I was a kid (we had dinosaurs as recently as the mid '80s, apparently), we settled for insulting each other. Kids these days don't know how good they have it. Get off my lawn!

This is not new. We already have this problem with SCADA and security camera DVRs. But I guess people need to be reminded about the security implications of these things.

I was just rereading some rants about security, and found again Joanna Rutkowska's The three approaches to computer security. These three ways are: Correctness, Isolation, and Obscurity (encryption, randomization).

These Internet-connected Things clearly fail Correctness and Obscurity. I intend to use Isolation. I'll use my router's VLAN features to set up a network without any direct connection to the Internet, and interact with the device only through a limited, external gateway. That should make it more difficult for malware to reach the Thing, or for malware on the Thing to affect the rest of my network.

Couldn't they use a well-established OS like android to gain access to its app ecosystem, or does Google only allow Android (or its google play store) to be used for things like handsets?

I still don't really see a point in smart devices, but if they become mainstream/common, I hope that it doesn't create yet another platform for developers to maintain.

I am pretty sure that Google lets you use Android for basically anything you want, but may restrict access to the Play Store if you don't meet their specifications (see Amazon's Kindle Fire series of tablets).

With that said...what apps do you really want on your appliances? Do you really need Star Wars Angry Birds on your toaster? I know recipe apps can be very helpful in the kitchen but even for that case I'd prefer having them on a tablet I can carry around with me while I work. Past that I can't think of a use case that makes it worthwhile.

You could imagine a nice modular approach for smart durable goods where the equivalent of a BIOS is baked into the object itself and everything else sits in a module that plugs in or talks usb or bluetooth or whatever ( which would at least be a step up from IR blasters and having to have a second remote just to turn your TV on and change the volume). But that wouldn't be maximally profitable in the short term or exclude enough 3d-party addons for most manufacturers.

There are the privacy issues (at least we have community rating so insurance companies don't care about our detailed eating habits), but for lots of appliance, as with cars, there are also serious safety issues. You really don't want your stove turning on full blast when you click on a spearphishing link from your phone, or your refrigerator deciding that it's OK to turn off during the day while you're away.

No doubt manufacturers will work these issues out after a few generations of early adopters have served as paying beta testers....

I'd rather see devices like fridges have something akin to SNMP and then have some "box" in my house able to talk to all of them and do things like warn me when the fridge temp is not within range, the stove has been on for >4 hours, the battery in my smoke alarm is low, etc.

Even better than the Rokus or the Apple TVs of the world would be devices like the Chromecast, which are extremely cheap and avoid the problem of yet one more storage bucket for your media, set of logins for your services, and extra remotes sitting around. Not that there isn't a place for set top boxes, of course, but if you want a screen on your refrigerator, I'd rather have a small HDMI device for streaming rather than needing to plug in my Twitter or Netflix login again to an Apple TV.

Of course, I can't imagine a scenario where I want a screen on my refrigerator. But if you must, just provide a screen and an input source, and then the source of your smarts becomes modular. Hopefully that allows Samsung to still make their money by selling the 'fridge pre-populated with some electronics, but also lets a user have some choice and replacement options.

I grew up with technology. I work in IT and am immersed in it all day. I love my tablet and my smartphone and my Chromecast and a hundred other gadgets. But I have a lot of trouble getting excited about smart appliances - I just don't see a compelling use case. What do I do with my internet connected washer? Get an email notification when it's done? Is that really so wonderful? I punch in my cheese purchase date so I'm notified when it's bad? Why does that have to be on my refrigerator - why is it better than my phone?

I must be one of those rare people who actually wants a smart home. For decades smart homes were promised to us in various tech mags and whatnot, but he reality usually included a prohibitively expensive centralized computer and wiring setup, and even still none of that included a convenient way to access those functions while away from your home. That is, until now. I don't want to tweet from my fridge. What I do want, is the ability to check what's in my fridge from my phone while i'm out in the grocery store to see if there's something I need.

I do agree that security is a huge, huge issue, and one that needs to be addressed. But I really don't see how resisting the "internet of things" is the longterm solution. The way technology seems to be trending, this is an inevitability, not a could be.

So instead of resisting, how do we force these companies to take security and privacy seriously?

smart laundry machines make sense for college dorms and large apartment complexes with shared laundry rooms where the residents want to see if there's any available without having to physically go and look, but I don't get why anyone would want that in a private house.

want to be alerted when your laundry is done? set an alarm on your phone for 45 minutes when you put stuff in the washer, then set another one for an hour when you move it to the dryer.

You think LG's little phoning home problem is some kind of isolated incident? Every 'smart' appliance will be funneling sweet, sweet, consumer analytics back to the mothership as fast as it can, even before the bot-herders crack the pitifully outdated firmware.

What you call malice they call opportunity! But yeah. There's almost no conceivable way a company is going to pass of scraping all that data. Hell, I doubt their shareholders would even let them not collect it and sell it on.

In the software world, there are companies that provide this level of support—the Microsofts and IBMs of the world—but it tends to be restricted to companies that have at least one eye on the enterprise market.

You might be a tad too pessimistic on this front.First of all, there is the recently established AllSeen alliance, which has some major players as members. Something that is good to see this early, since it will probably help common standards which eases maintenance.

Second, there is Technicolor, which is mostly a software company these days and not exactly a small one at that. They seem to be developing an API for the IoT named Qeo and for now, at least the marketing talk does not forget to mention security.And last week they announced Virdata, which seems to be a cloud stack for managing and analysing M2M data. One of the partners there is actually IBM.

And there will probably be others as well. Not that any of this guarantees a secure future, but the development is certainly not left over to hardware-first companies only as you seem to fear.

In the software world, there are companies that provide this level of support—the Microsofts and IBMs of the world—but it tends to be restricted to companies that have at least one eye on the enterprise market.

You might be a tad too pessimistic on this front.First of all, there is the recently established AllSeen alliance, which has some major players as members. Something that is good to see this early, since it will probably help common standards which eases maintenance.

Second, there is Technicolor, which is mostly a software company these days and not exactly a small one at that. They seem to be developing an API for the IoT named Qeo and for now, at least the marketing talk does not forget to mention security.And last week they announced Virdata, which seems to be a cloud stack for managing and analysing M2M data. One of the partners there is actually IBM.

And there will probably be others as well. Not that any of this guarantees a secure future, but the development is certainly not left over to hardware-first companies only as you seem to fear.

It isn't for Android, either, but we don't see the hardware companies deploying Google's updates.

I get the whole TV needing updating for apps that interact with the wild world of the internet. But something like a Smart Washing Machine need only send a message when its done or be able to respond to a message to start. There is no reason to believe that will ever have to change. Hell even if you buy a smart washing machine and 2 days later the world shifts from SMS to some quantum messaging you will most likely still be able to get an app to send the SMS to your washing machine.

Well talking about washing machines is there a physical reason why we need both a washer and a dryer and can't just have 1 machine that can wash and dry cloths without intervention. a quick google search shows that you can get these no idea if they are good through.

Likewise I could see a sort of smart fridge that lets you see whats on each shelf either via a camera or other method so you could check to see if you have something when your not at home (ie at work attempting to figure out dinner). I can see a use case for most smart devices even if they are very limited. For instance I would love to be able to assign outlets in my house to rooms and control the whole room remotely including overhead lights. I know I could get part of the effect now with some of the "smart" lights that have come out recently but not entirely the same thing.